Pat Cummins on Wednesday equalled KL Rahul’s record of hitting the fastest IPL 50 from just 14 balls as Kolkata Knight Riders thrashed Mumbai Indians by five wickets to occupy the top spot in the points table. Cummins, who remained not out at 56 from 15 balls, left Mumbai Indians skipper Rohit Sharma awestruck with his batting prowess.
Sharma said, “Never expected him (Cummins) to come and play like that,” Sharma said after the match.
Batting first, Mumbai Indians made 162-5 in 20 overs. Suryakumar Yadav was the top scorer for his side as he made 52 from 36 balls. Pat Cummins was the pick of the KKR bowler with two wickets.
Shah Rukh Khan’s team had no trouble in achieving the target. They did so in style by losing just five wickets and 24 balls to spare. Aside from Pat Cummin’s fifty, Venkatesh Iyer too scored his half-century.
Tymal Mills and Murugan Ashwin picked up two wickets each.
Sharma said that his side simply did not bat well. However, he praised his batsmen to score 70+ runs in the last 4-5 overs. “We did not bowl according to the plan. We had the game till the 15th over, but then Cummins was brilliant. This will be hard to digest, the way it turned out in the last few overs. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us,” he said.
KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer said, Extraordinary! I couldn’t believe the way he (Cummins) was hitting the ball. During the timeout, the plan was for Venky to drop anchor and tell Pat to just swing at everything because that’s what he was doing before too. We have to take responsibility as top-order batters. All of us have the ability to hit the ball long. In the powerplay in both innings, the pitch was quite the same. After the powerplay, it got a lot easier I guess.
Pat Cummins was the Player Of The Match for his all-round performance.